Recent Judicial Decisions
| Published date | 01 January 1950 |
| Date | 01 January 1950 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X5002300103 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
RECENT
JUDICIAL
DECISIONS
9
of antecedent acts or of antecedent character
that
it was impossible to
prove
that
the
accused came within
the
category of suspected persons.
Recent
Judicial
Decisions
FORM
OF
NOTICE
OF INTENDED PROSECUTION FOR CARELESS
DRIVING
Venn v. Morgan
A
NOTICE
under
section 21
(c)
of intended prosecution for an
offence
under
the
Road Traffic Act, 1930, should
not
be considered
as a formal document like a summons or a conviction.
The
object of
the
notice is to call
the
attention of
the
driver of
the
motor-car to
the
time and circumstances in respect of which he may be charged so as to
give him an opportunity, in good time while memories are still fresh,
to prepare his defence. A
member
of
the
Divisional
Court
used these
words in allowing
the
appeal of a police inspector in Venn v. Morgan
(1949, 2
All
E.R. 562) from adecision of justices dismissing an
information for careless driving.
The
respondent was charged with careless driving contrary to sec-
tion 12 (I) of
the
Road Traffic Act, 1930.
In
pursuance of section 21
(c)
of
the
Act a notice of intended prosecution
had
been served on
him
wherein it was
stated:
".
. . it is intended to institute proceedings
against you for an offence against section 12 of the Road Traffic Act,
1930, namely
that
you
did
drive amotor-car on
the
Cambridge-
Linton
road, Babraham, at approximately
+25
p.m.
on Saturday,
January 29th, 1949."
The
words of section 12 describing
the
offences
thereunder, namely driving
"without
due
care
and
attention"
or
"without reasonable consideration for other persons using
the
road,"
were omitted from
the
notice.
The
respondent objected
that
the
notice
was bad.
The
justices upheld this objection.
The
point
is
not
an easy
one, as is shown by
the
fact
that
one of
the
three
judges of
the
Divisional
Court
dissented from
the
majority view
that
the
justices were wrong.
The
majority decision rested on
the
following considerations.
The
language of section 21
(c)
is
not
that
the alleged offender is to
have fourteen days' notice of an
intended
prosecution specifying
the
alleged offence
but
that
he is to have a notice "specifying
the
nature
of
the
alleged offence."
The
reference to section 12 in
the
notice in
the
present case gave
the
respondent notice
that
he was going to be
summoned either for driving amotor vehicle on a road without
due
care
and
attention or driving amotor vehicle on a road without reasonable
consideration for other persons using
the
road.
Those
are two separate
offences,
but
in
the
descriptive note beside section 12
they
are
sum-
marised as " careless driving," and in section 21 those two offences are
grouped together
under
the
head of " careless driving."
This
lay-out
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